Thorough Ivestigation of Banning? -let's do the math

Ok - because of the number of recent threads about people being "unjustly banned" for bot behavior, I was curious. ANet's defense is that they do a thorough job of investigation before banning an account for 3rd party software. But is that possible?

Gaile has already said in another post that they ban 2000 account per week. Now, let's say they have 4 people employed full time (40hrs/week) to investigate bots. Each one must investigate 500 per week. That means 12.5 accounts investigate per person per hour. That comes to 4.8 minutes spent investigating each account.

Hmm, if someone spent less than 5 minute observing me, I might appear to be a bot too.

On the other hand, if they were to spend even as much as 1/2 hour "thoroughly investigating" each bot suspect, they would have to employ 25 full time people who did nothing but check on possible bot accounts. Do you honestly think they do that?

Me thinks many of those who said they were banned unjustly just may be telling the truth.

They probablly aren't just spending 5 miniutes "observing the person." They are probablly spending 5 miniutes or so looking over the server logs that have been automatically tracking the behavior of flagged players.

There is no extensive investigations as a post i made about a friend of mine showed which was closed. They auto ban then if you complain the chances of you getting your account back is a little better.

Although you bring up a very good point (and I'm sure they have more than 4 people that investigate more than just "bot-like" activity, but for the sake of argument, we'll stick with your assumptions), there's something else you're forgetting. You're assuming the supposed 2,000 banned every week are the only ones being investigated. That's basically saying everyone they investigate is banned, period. It's a lot more likely they investigate 10-20x that amount, and then a percentage of that total number end up banned. That means these "4 full-timers" are investigating upwards of 20,000-40,000 people per week. That's what, 125-250 accounts per person per hour?

It's possible, I guess. Make that 4 people into 8 people, and you cut that down to 62.5-125 per hour, and then allow for them to be able to watch maybe 10 people at a time - 6.25-12.5 per hour. Of course, this is average time, and too many factors to assume. Some people might be more obviously not bots (stopping to have a conversation with guildies, for example) and within a couple of minutes they are moving on to another subject. It's very possible, I think.

As I actually do investigations via computer analysis of databases for high risk transactions my personal expertise tells me that there are certain paramaters that trigger me to look a little more closely at an individual. At that point I spend several hours and cross check other documentation and records before I do anything. Of course, for me, it is not a game, these people lose their jobs and/or go to jail. So the threshhold of action is somewhat higher.

I can't say with certainty what paramaters there are that trigger them, but account activity, professions (being a Mo/W), locations visited, wealth, etc., I am sure work against an account holder and put them further up the profile.

I am sure that Anet does not want to disclose what their investigative methods are because the botters are coming up with strategies of their own to reduce their own risks of losing their accounts. Hours logged on? Get multiple accounts and switch them out every few hours. Same location? Switch it around a little. Cash on hand? Spread it around the accounts a bit.

I would hope that they actually observe the player online and draw a conclusion followed by some sort of supervisory review before they actually ban someone.

If they just look at thresholds and ban you automatically when you hit certain paramaters, then I think they would have a user riot on their hands.

Some bots are pretty easily investigated, so you can cut out a lot of time just checking the main bot farm places, and banning the ones that display OBVIOUS bot-like behaviour...

What I'm wondering is, how can a real person show bot-like behaviour? When you're walking around in the Guild Wars world you can easly reconize the bots by the following things:
A bot:
- Is always Mo/W ( with exeptions on a few N/A's )
- Has standard looks
- Has standard armour
- Has standard armour colour
- Always walks in the same pattern
- Always have nicknames that have been randomly bashed on the keyboard ( Diwje Naond, Ijkkj Nidwj, etc )
- Are only to be found in common farming spots
- Never chat
- A LOT of hours online

Now, when a player plays Guild Wars. How can they even look like those? Living people don't generally have standard armour, have "dedicated" nicknames, other looks, they chat, etc. The only thing they might have in common with a bot is the amount of hours online, and the hours they spend farming. But for a human player it'd be impossible to farm literally as much as bots.

So what do the researchers try to find out? If a software program interferes with Guild Wars, sure that's a good guess. But what else?

I am not sure but I was banned for botting and I have never botted. Just before being banned I was farming bergen hot springs with my mo/d 55hp. my character name at the time was wicked farming monk and i had on starter armor so i did not fit many of the parameters listed by Aera. although I did have around 600k in the bank.

So no they do not only look at people with standard (and btw I dont know what you mean by standard) armor, or at only poeple with keyboard bashed names.

anet fails sometimes at differenciating a real player from a bot.

from what i've seen, anet auto-flags mo/w and they can somehow link multiple accounts to 1 user. they ban the botting accounts and storage accounts associated with it.

what's strange is that sometimes they ban accounts even before they bot. somehow they track the user's new accounts. i can certify this info from sum1 i know that bots. they guy even changed his IP and they still banned his newly created accounts before he started to bot on them. according to him, their bot detection system has improved since the release of nightfall. while it is good to get rid of bots, i think it's unethical to ban somebody before they actually commit the crime.

also a year ago, i seen 1 case in which anet banned a pvp player lol. he took a break and farmed UW for some time and he got banned. after countless emails to anet and arguments, they unbaned him.

but it seems that lately their detection system flags more innocents than before. i have seen more and more ppl complain about being banned unjustly permanently or not. only a few days ago a friend got a 72 hour ban for spaming 5 times wts xx IN trade chat..

what annoys me about anet's behavior these days is that they NEVER justify themselves. if you email then regarding a ban, they'll reply with an automatic bull-crap message stating that permanent bans are documented etc... you have to keep whining to get them to actually look into the issue. and then again, some GMs still don't look into it and u have to keep updating ur email again and again untill somebody takes pity in ur case and cheks. if u really didn't use any bots, they will unban u IF u keep whining to them and ask them for proof but it might take up to a few weeks.

i would also like to add they they take some weird measures to make sure you're the actual owner of the account. they even ask for your game cd-key. if you happen to throw the card after installing, they will refuse to adress ur issue. i once asked them something regarding a forgotten user name on playNC and they wanted a damn PICTURE of my game reciept...

the best thing is to not have any problems in the first place. if u forget ur pass/user name or if u act like a bot, u're in for a nasty surprise from the support department. of course this is only from my personal experience and from what friends told me. you might get lucky and actually meet helpful staff out there.

Define "standard looks" and "standard armor"? I've seen what appeared to bots(names like HBjhbjh Hbjjbhj with no guild, always runs for the sign post then outside with the exact same path, etc) with a wide variety of "looks". Always monk, always scar armor, but some of them have the armor dyed, some of them have different faces/skin colors/hair colors, etc. In other words, same as any human 55 monk farmer, aside from the name. Likewise, if by "standard" armor you mean non-max AL sets, most HUMAN players I know who farm with a 55 do it the same way, why spend money on a max AL set when your AL is irrelevant for that type of farming? Last of all, there's tons of apparent Mo/D farmers in Bergen, Mo/Me is common as well...they're certainly not all, or even almost all Mo/W. Oh, and about them not stopping to chat...well, when I'm farming, I don't usually stop to chat either. In fact, I normally play with All Chat turned OFF to avoid the spam, I only turn it on when I'm looking for something specific or in my guild hall with guildies, so I don't chat either. And that's certainly not just me, people who are online farming are online to make money, not to stop and shoot the breeze with random people in town. Hell, some of these people even log a lot of hours online. The only things close to a giveaway between a bot and an actual 55 monk farmer is that the bot will always follow the exact same path, whereas the human won't be as precise, and possibly the name choice(there's a better chance that a name like "Lol Another 55 Monk" is real than one named "HJbbyy Ihbgbh" I'll admit).

Bots are pretty amusing to watch actually, and it's kinda creepy to think that there is no person behind the char and that it's running on auto pilot...

I was farming Aborstone last night and noticed about 10 bots foolow each other in perfect single file in the exact same way every time... hectic!!!

I find it both creepy and amusing to watch too Destinny.

I'd love to see one...I probably have but I just wouldn't know...

Just go to Granite Citadel, it'll be pretty obvious which are the bots

Worst customer service ever. Friend's account got stolen and he couldn't change the password. He contacted ANet and they asked for a CD-Key, which he threw out (I'm sure cause he was in the game since Beta). As a result, he quit GW and some bot master took over the account... Tried to log into his account recently and it's permanently banned. The moral of the story is: No CD-Key, no service. Good thing I still have the receipts (I think), because I got rid of my CD-Keys while cleaning my room a while ago .

I dont really know how thorough your math investigation is, since its based on some arbitrary assumption that Anet only has 4 people investigating accounts.

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I dont know what Anet's setup is for flagging bots....but i know what i would flag and not flag for further investigation.

-15k armor, for now, its safe to assume bots dont do 15k armor
-Gold/perfect weapons that are HIGH cost. Anet knows which skins cost a lot.....My 55 monk uses a +5 energy Jade Sword with non-tattoo armor.
-If you are primarily hunting Mo/X bots....check if the account plays other classes.......If an account doesnt play ANYTHING else....thats a little suspicious
-Track PMs and Guild Chatter, no PMs and Guild...a little suspicious...(though not neccessarily bottish)
-Continous one-way transfer of gold/items.
-Lack of any friends in friendslist
-excessive activity time, as in, constant....Real people stop to use the bathroom and/or sleep or afk for some short amounts of time.... long amounts of AFK activity isnt counted since lots of REAL players do this.
-I dont know if Anet can tell which input a player is using, but a player using ONLY keyboard motions would get flagged by me...since players still need the mouse to adjust the view from time to time.

Then, only if you fit the "suspicious" flags then do you get investigated and tracked to see if you truly are botting.

But thats what I would do...i dont know what Anet does....but i know they can see what you see and their server records stuff you do and say.
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I keep anything with a registration or serial number for all my games, software and hardware, since i like to reformat a lot. I have a nice little box of serials.

Exact same thing happened to my mate's account, except I had his cd key (I gave it to him when I buzzed out how cool this game was... I'm stressing 'was' here :S). He's very lucky to have gotten his account back, but the stupid hacker deleted all of his characters.

A good portion of them have that armor (although one in that shot has cleverly died her arms green, fooling anyone thinking she is a bot). Now I don't see how these can run around all day in Granite Citadel and not get banned while my friend wearing nice armor, talking to us, gets banned.

Shouldn't ANet have a permanent watch on GC?

EDIT: Woops, meant to post thumbnail.

One of my friends just got banned for "botting". He was doing the Urgoz run. He wasn't using chat because he was on vent (I think thats what got him). Now his account is perm banned and he can not appeal it. He has called anet sent in emails trying to plead with them but now they just don't respond. Which is really stupid IMO.

An Urgoz Run ????

Not a botters haven there. But maybe the bans come sometime down the road from the events that actually lead to the ban???

ie: a person uses or acts like a bot and it is investigated for a day or two then they get banned in a different place.

Are all the people being banned 55's?